Letters: Therapies on trial

Edzard Ernst (Forum, 17 July) thinks that complementary therapies must, to 'mature' as a medicine, be subjected to the rigours of the randomised controlled trial.

RCTs are not a foolproof method of evaluating any therapy and have been hotly debated since first becoming fashionable in the 1970s. An RCT cannot be designed, conducted and interpreted entirely objectively by the people who undertake it. The 'experts' of the medical establishment have a particular axe to grind (and a golden egg to protect) and I for one do not trust them to undertake the task of impartially evaluating complementary therapies.

I reject Ernst's definition of complementary medicine as 'medical practices which do not conform to the standards of the medical community', which implies that orthodox medicine is science, alternative medicine something else entirely. Many orthodox medical practices currently in vogue have never been subjected to the canonical RCT. By their own standards, ...

To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.

To continue reading this article, log in or subscribe to New Scientist